According to Trinh, following the March coup deforce, the General Association of the O verseas V ietnam ese in Thailand (Tong Hoi Viet Kieu Thäi-lan) dispatched a representative to northern Vietnam to establish direct relations with the Viet Minh General Bureau.83 A simultaneous decision was made to establish relations with the Seri Thai, evidently without waiting for instructions from the General Bureau. Because of this decision, the Vietnamese in Thailand were soon given assistance by the Seri Thai and the Lao-pen-Lao.84 According to the Vietnamese scholar, Hoang Nhat Tan, Piidi directed Seri Thai leaders to form secret "anti-Japanese resistance zones" in northeast Thailand in 1945. As a part o f this plan, Pridi contacted Nguyln Chan to request overseas Vietnamese assistance. Tan confirmed in an interview that the overseas Vietnamese in Thailand "supported Pridi" in the form ation o f these bases, known as chien khu
(fighting zones) to the Vietnamese. While details are limited, Tan indicated that Pridi helped the overseas Vietnamese to establish a chien khu in Na Kae.85 This is confirmed by another Vietnamese scholar, Tran Xuän Cau, who states that the Na Kae base was established in April 1945.86 Nakae is a small, northeastern Thai village, located along the
81 CVDCQ, p. 52. Interestingly, in January 1945 the Japanese brought Tran Trong Kim to Bangkok, where he stayed with some o f his close associates until 29 March, when he was taken back to Vietnam by the Japanese to set up a new government. See: Trän Trong Kim, M ot Com Gio Bui (Kien Van Luc) [Dust Storm (A Memoir)], (npc., NXB Vlnh Som, 1969), pp. 32-42. For further evidence o f Japanese measures against the Vietnamese in Laos, see: Dang Bi'ch Ha, et al„ Luom Sir Nu&c Lao [An Outline History o f Laos], (Hanoi: NXBKHXH, 1978), p. 164 and Tran Xuän Cau, C äch Mang Thing Tarn Lao Näm 1945' [The August 1945 Lao Revolution], NCLS, No. 163, (July and August 1975), p. 32.
82 CVDCQ, p. 52. For more details concerning the Lao-Pen-Lao, see: Gunn, op. c it, pp. 127-31.
It seems likely that the Tong H oi Viet Kieu differed from the Hoi Viet Kieu in that it was the headquarters. 8 4 CVDCQ, p. 52.
83 Interview with Hoang Nhat Tan, 5 May 1989, Hanoi
8 ^ Trän Xuän Cäu, op. c it, p. 32. Le Manh Trinh also makes reference to these Seri Thai-assisted training camps for Lao and Vietnamese youths. CVDCQ, pp. 57-58 and also see: Dang Bich Hä, op. cit., p. 163. This is the first concrete evidence historians have o f direct Seri Thai-Viet Minh cooperation. Cäu incorrectly states that Na Kae was in Sakhon Nakhon province. Trinh writes in his memoir that overseas Vietnamese youths were given military training in such bases in June and July 1945. CVDCQ, p. 58. Significantly, on 7 August 1965 the Communist Party o f Thailand launched its first guerilla attack on
Mekong River south of Nakhon Phanom. It had become a Vietnamese resistance post in the 1920s, when it was first organised by Dang Thuc HOa and his associates.
According to Tan, the Na Kae base consisted of twenty to thirty Vietnamese youths who made weapons.87 Cäu wrote that in the end the Na Kae base consisted of 120 Lao and overseas Vietnamese, armed with rudimentary weapons.88 Tan explained that this cooperation between the Viet Minh and the Seri Thai only lasted "a few months" before a decision was made by Pridi to abandon armed fighting in these zones which, in the end, had accomplished "very little."89 Pridi did supply some weapons to the Vietnamese during this period, though the quantity remains unclear but was probably small.90
Thai sources are conspicuously quiet when it comes to discussing Thai-Vietnamese cooperation during WWII. However, Pridi hints in his memoir at possible Thai- Vietnamese cooperation.
A number of other Southeast Asian nationalists who were staying in Siam at the time [of the war] joined the anti-Japanese resistance movement [Seri Thai]. Their groups received training in the theory and practice of guerilla warfare from our resistance group
[Seri Thai].91
Interestingly, a September 1945 article in the Viet Minh's mouthpiece, CCru Quoc
(National Salvation), reported that during the anti-Japanese resistance the "overseas
Vietnamese had supported the Siamese people competently in several guerilla battles."92 Presumably, with such cooperation in mind, Trinh wrote in his memoir that from mid- 1945, "the longtime neighbours of Vietnam, Laos and Thailand became friends in the struggle against the common enemy: fascist Japan."93
Besides this cooperation, Seri Thai leaders in the northeast also employed some Viet Minh cadres in their guerilla operations. Toward the end of the war, northeast politicians and leaders of the Northeastern Seri Thai Committee, Chamlong Daoruang and Tiang
Thai security forces in Na Kae. See: Robert J. Muscat, Thailand and the United States: Development,
Security, and Foreign Aid, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), p. 154.
87 Interview with Hoang Nhat Tan, 5 May 1989, Hanoi. 8 8 Tran Xuän Cau, op. c it, p. 32.
O Q
Interview with H okig Nhat Tan, 5 May 1989, Hanoi. Weapons parachuted to the Seri Thai by the Allies included sten guns, detonators, machine guns, booby traps, and ammunition. See: Kachent Dechakunchon, 'Khabuan Kan Seri Thai: Changwat Khon Kaeri [The Seri Thai: Khon Kaen Province],
Sinlapa Watthanatham [Journal o f Art and Culture], Vol. 8, No. 6, (April 1987), pp. 63-65.
9 0 Interview with Hokng Nhat Tan, 5 May 1989, Hanoi.
91 Pridi Phanomyong, C hiw it Phanphuan khong Khaophacao lae 21 Pi thi Liphai nai Sathanarat Ratsadon
Cin [My Ever Changing Life and 21 Years o f Exile in the People's Republic o f China], Trans, from
French into Thai by Camnong Phakhuanwut and Phonthip Toyai, (npc., 1974), p. 88, cited in consultation with an English translation o f Pridi's memoir, 'Southeast Asia's Association o f Nations,'
Bangkok Post, 28 November 1974, p. 15. I have been unable to locate the original French version of
Pridi's memoir.
9 2 'Quan Doi Viet Kieu Hoat Dong & Xiem-la' [An Overseas Vietnamese Army is Operational in Siam], Cfru Quoc, 22 September 1945, N o. 40.
Serikhan, w orked directly with Viet Minh representatives in Thailand. A nother northeastern Seri Thai official, Thongin Phuriphat, worked with Tiang to recruit Vü Hiru Binh into a number of Seri Thai anti-Japanese operations in the region.94 By this time, Binh was a Viet M inh leader working along the M ekong River. A Vietnam ese com m unist m em ber in Thailand, Mai Vän Quang, was in contact with Chamlong Daoruang as well. While the details surrounding their cooperation remain sketchy, they were reported to have been friends by a Viet Minh representative who worked out of Thailand in late 1945.95
Although it is unclear when exactly Vietnam ese organisations in Thailand were incorporated into the Viet Minh hierarchy, Tan said that it occurred during the last months o f the Pacific War. Trinh agreed, writing in his memoir that before the war ended, the Viet Minh General Bureau in Vietnam sent a special representative to Laos and Thailand to establish formal ties with overseas Vietnamese organisations. Two Overseas V ietnam ese Special Committees (Dae uy Viet Kieu), one each in Laos and Thailand, were created under the "direct leadership" o f the Viet Minh General Bureau and the G eneral Association of the Overseas Vietnamese in Thailand before the war ended.96 Symbolising the increasing importance of Thailand to the Vietnamese independence movement as the war came to an end, in m id-1945 communist party branches in Laos and Thailand, following earlier instructions sent from the ICP Central Committee, dispatched representatives to northern Vietnam to attend an upcoming National Congress in Tan Trao.97
9 4 Telephone communication with Tran Van Dlnh, 29 December 1990, Washington, DC.
Interview with Tran Van Dlnh, 20 June 1990, Washington, DC. It w ill be recalled that Mai Van Quang had first come to Thailand when he was in his teens and had studied under Dang Thüc HCra and Hoang Van Hoan. A 1968 Vietnamese communist document stated that besides cooperating with the Allies during WWII, Pridi also "secretly worked with the Communist Party o f Thailand [CPT]." In December 1942, the First Congress o f the Party met to form the CPT and promulgate a political programme. According to this document, Thai communists considered this to be the official founding day o f the Party, preferring to ignore the SCP's original formation in April 1930. See: 'NhQmg Net,' p. 37 and 'Congress o f the Fourth Congress of the CPT,' in Weng Towicharakan, op. cit, pp. 25 and 1 4 043. The similarity to
the Cambodian Communist Party's attempt to rewrite its original founding day, removed from its affiliation with the Vietnamese, is obvious.
9 6 CVDCQ, p. 53.
9 7 Som Tung, op. cit., p. 163; Interview with Tran Van Dlnh, 20 June 1990, Washington, DC; and Hoang